Martha MacCallum Validates Anti-Immigrant Filmmaker's Xenophobia

As the mouthpiece of the paranoid, nativist crowd that sees immigrants as an insidious threat to the American way, Fox News does love paranoid, nativist "filmmaker" and Cliven Bundy fanboy Dennis Michael Lynch whose oeuvre is all about how scary immigrants are a threat to the American way. And despite its claim of fairness and balance, Fox talkers, especiallyMegyn Kelly, actually view him as credible and, worse, validate his not so thinly veiled racism. Megyn Kelly even pimped his possible presidential candidacy! Last Friday night, Fox anchor Martha MacCallum showed Lynch more Fox love. But during her discussion with a pro-immigration guest, she got very, uh, argumentative. Go figure!

MacCallum began with a report on how Lynch was recently at the border "documenting just how easy it is to cross." As she spoke, an image of the visual for Lynch's latest propaganda piece, "They Come to America," was shown. Video from the movie was shown. It consisted of a guy (an illegal?) crossing a fence (the border?) while throbbing (scary?) music was played. MacCallum commented "it's as easy as that." She set the propaganda message for the piece with her question to Lynch: "Do you believe that we will see a new surge of immigrants coming across the border as a result of this struggle that is now playing out in Washington?"

Naturally, Lynch agreed and predicted that because Pres. Obama is talking "amnesty," even more scary immigrants are on their way to the border. He claimed that border patrol agents are "petrified" of "the new surge." He actually - ready for it - made the bizarre and totally bogus claim that Ebola and terrorists are coming through the border. MacCallum didn't rebut his batshit crazy assertions. The chyron reinforced Lynch's false narrative of a connection between Obama and the border jumpers: "Immigration & Executive Action." He did some fear mongering with the comment that "we are extremely exposed as a nation."

After MacCallum mentioned that Obama hasn't visited the border, Lynch claimed that Obama wants the "surge." The crazy talk continued. Lynch lectured Martha about how the only way to stop immigration is to remove the job "magnet" and stop saying the word "amnesty." Providing Lynch with more talking points, MacCallum asked him if he believes that Obama wants "amnesty" to be part of his legacy. Lynch ranted about the large number (which he artificially inflated to 40,000) of undocumented immigrants and asserted that the only way to "undo" any Obama amnesty is for a future president to be "brave enough" to "override that amnesty." He shouted about how, at that point, millions of people will have paperwork to "compete" against Americans and that will "change the country." Cue the second act which was very different from the first.

After MacCallum thanked Lynch for his commentary, she introduced her second guest, former Ingelwood, NJ mayor Michael Wildes who provided some balance in his reasoned approach to the immigration issue. He even suggested that Lynch was engaging in fear mongering. While MacCallum said nothing during Lynch's rant, she challenged Wilde's statement that we want talented people to come to the country. Almost shouting, she said "what people want is for people to come here legally, to go through the process, to come here legally, to not pour over the border, threaten some of the properties on the other side of the border." She said that she thought it was easy for Wildes to espouse a reasoned approach, "from where you're sitting; but you're not living in the border area these people are being threatened where their own livelihood and their own land is put in jeopardy time and time again where they feel nobody is listening to them."

When Wildes tried to explain the benefits of comprehensive immigration reform, MacCallum argued against every point he tried to make. In advancing Lynch's claim that the border is open, she actually claimed that "we don't seem to have a border at all" and whined about "illegal immigration."